Mother and daughter visual artists Julie and Annie Forrester will lead a series of engagements with traveller families, exploring relationships and connections with local environs and with Cork Midsummer Festival’s cultural programmes. Over this time they will also explore with the families potential barriers to arts participation, using a series of critical questions that focus on “How can the festival be more accessible and welcoming for people from the Traveller community?”

Leanne McDonagh, a visual artist from a Traveller background will join the project as guest artist and adviser.

Beginning in February these activities are currently taking place remotely, with plans to move into socially distanced walks with the artists and a family group in March and April.  Once restrictions have eased the plan is to move into indoors workshops, visits and trails during May until July.

Annie Forrester is an illustrator and multi-disciplinary artist focused on capturing the magic and mundanities of daily life. Her drawings are fed by current social and political climates in Ireland, as well as nature and interconnectivity between peoples, landscapes and creatures.

Julie Forrester is a visual artist whose research based practice is concerned with the connective tissue that binds us to place.  She often works collaboratively where memory, habit and association are explored through a variety of process based approaches, from drawing to sound work, lens based media and the moving image.

Award-winning visual artist, teacher and Traveller woman Leanne McDonagh’s work features in both private and public collections nationally and internationally.  She is currently working on a % for Art public sculpture, the RTÉ Art project Illuminations and recently illustrated Why the Moon Travels of folktales written by fellow Traveller, Oein De Bhairduin, the first of its kind in Ireland.

This project is funded by The Community Mental Health Fund, supported by the Department of Health, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, The Arts Council, Springboard Family Services, Cork Midsummer Festival and Cork City Partnership.